Highways go mobile

A total of 800 highways in East China’s Jiangxi Province will adopt mobile payments at toll stations by the end of December, the Jiangxi Expressway Networking Management Center said Monday.

Scanning devices are being installed at toll stations, and some are already in use, according to the center.

As of October, the number of toll stations in the province that accept mobile payment had reached 335, the center said in a statement.

China’s third-party mobile payment market has continued its rapid expansion as cashless transactions gain popularity in the country.

In the second quarter, mobile payments reached 23 trillion yuan ($3.46 trillion), up 22.5 percent from the previous quarter, according to a report by Beijing-based marketing consultancy firm Analysys International.

China had 724 million mobile phone users at the end of June, more than 35 percent of whom make mobile payments often, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.